Sunday, March 1, 2015

For the last two years, my writing group has been
meeting at the Atrium downtown, which is a lovely building and free for the
public to use – for good and bad. The good being lovely architecture, lots of
space and a nice central location, with the bad being incredibly uncomfortable
seats, tons of noise from other groups or the indoor restaurant patio and insufficient
lighting to see one’s notes by.

Thankfully, that's all changed now with our new
location!

They've added many HUGE TV's since for presentations! Techie delight!

The Ground Control Café is downtown as well, only
a block away from my work and it's quite simply a meet up groups dream come
true. It's ultramodern, has tons of meeting space( with very comfy seating )plus the owners have been extremely
accommodating about our needs and schedules. I could not have asked for a
better venue to move our writing group to or better timing; the last few
meetings we've had with speakers have been abysmally rife with noise, to the
point where people only a few seats away could not hear half the presentation.

I'm extremely
excited about the possibilities that the new space opens up for our group, not
the least of which will be to attract back members who had issues with meeting
in the Atrium due to the seating or the noise levels. It's just such great luck
and timing that we've found such a terrific venue that has agreed to host us on
a regular basis. All for the price of a few coffees for the evening!

There, I just pinched myself again. It’s real –
huzzah!

Feb 24 – I Snagged a Pebble!

Whoa, I almost missed it!

After waking this morning at my usual time, well
after the sun was up but long before my brain had kicked into gear, I logged
into my computer to check what was going on in the world.

An e-mail was waiting from Pebble: did I know Something Big was happening this very
AM?

Apparently I had missed their previous e-mail and
so I wasted no time in clicking their link to find a brand-new kick starter had
sprung up while I had been sleeping.

Scanning Pebble’s Kickstarter site info at super
speed, I was shocked to discover that most of the 10,000 Early Bird watches had
been spoken for already – at $40.00 off retail, they were a fantastic deal!
With frantic haste I logged into my kick starter account and placed an order as
I saw the counter for the Early Birds dip below 100 remaining. I held my breath
and nearly stopped breathing as the server timed out… making me try all over
again! With nail-biting slowness, I let out a breath as the ‘Confirmed!’ Message
flashed on my screen.

I’d done it, I had snagged a Pebble Time!

The
watch has all the great features of my current Pebble Smartwatch, with the
added bonus of color and a built-in mic to allow me to use all sorts of voice-enabled
app features. To top it all off, the watch will start shipping in only a few
months time in May 2015, far sooner than the original Pebble had reached its
backers. That’s crazy-great!

Since it was cheap night at the cinemas, I cycled
all the way over to the Tillicum Mall, a 30 minute ride that I counted as my
quote of regular exercise for the week. Jupiter Ascending, the latest film from
the Wachowskis, creators of The Matrix, is a space opera with tons of eye candy…
and a distinct lack of a solid story.

Now, I knew that going into the film and I didn’t
care; I wanted to see what they had done with the film as a whole. The special
effects were excellent, if not inspired and quite honestly a few sequences went
on far longer than they should have. The characters were all right, but nobody
stood out enough for me to identify with; even though Sean Bean survived
unscathed until the end of the film( sorry,
was that a spoiler? )even he couldn’t make me care about the plot, which
had more than a few logical flaws in it. I think the part I like the least
about the film was the main villain, whose wheezy whispering voice annoyed far
more than it terrified me.

I think that when – not if – I find Jupiter Ascending on BluRay in a year
or so in the discount bin, I'll pick it up just for the visuals. Who knows?
Maybe by then a dedicated soul may have put together a fan cut of the film that
makes far more sense than what the Wachowskis assembled.

Feb 25 – Homeworld Remastered!

At last, the wait is over!

My copy of Homeworld Remastered finished
downloading and installing( from Steam )after work today. While I missed out on
getting a cool light-up model of the mothership( all the pre-orders sold out
immediately )it’s still a thrill to be able to play the game again.

-sigh- I really wanted that model.

There’s just so much about Homeworld to love. The
graphics: detailed yet not overdone, in an art style inspired by my fave scifi spacecraft
artist Chris Foss. The gameplay: real-time strategy that’s perfectly balanced
without being too complex. The story: well, that’s what got me…

The story in Homeworld is epic and relatable: a
world’s peoples discover they aren’t native to their planet and are forced on a
Hero’s Journey to discover their roots in the galactic core.

It’s epic and gorgeous and I can see it eating a
lot of my time up all over again. I never finished the original( big surprise
)though I have a feeling there was a good life-reason for that at the time; I
can’t recall. I did finish the sequel, oddly enough, which was so satisfying a feeling!

All the same, I can see myself finishing the game
this time around. It’s just too good a game not
to…

Feb 26 – Yo-Yo-Me? Also: Oops

I don't know what it is, but I've been all over
the place this week.

Even testing my blood sugar hasn't really prove
conclusive, which kind of surprised me. I don't know if it's the weather or
something else, but each day I've been up and down mood-wise several times, which
is unusual for me - I'm usually much more straight-on-the-level when it comes
to mood.

Since I can't spot a single cause, I'm inclined to
chalk it up to my subconscious working overtime on a whole bunch of things and
my conscious mind is getting the flak from that. Which is fine as exclamations
go, but it doesn't really help in dealing with the fallout each day. All I can
do is try to consciously moderate my moods, though to be honest they’re in no
way what I described as serious swings… just more like blah and rah and back to
blah again, mostly over small things.

Strange, but there you have it.

And…. It’s hard to believe, but I only played
Homeworld Remastered for one day before I managed to screw up my computer so
that I can't play a whole host of games, HW:R included. It has to do with Microsoft’s
.NET architecture and… well, it’s really technical. So much so that I can't see
any immediate solution to the problem save completely reformatting my system
and reinstalling Windows 7, which is a royal pain to do and not only because of
the sheer amount of time it will take.

Quite honestly, I may just wait until Windows 10
comes out later this year and install that. Until then, I have 1.5 novels to
write and more revision to do than I have time for, so as usual, entertaining
myself will have to go on the back burner...

Feb 27 – I have been, and always will be…

One of my idols passed away today: Leonard Nimoy.

No other actor had a greater influence on my life
than he did, in portraying the character of Spock on the original Star Trek. I
wasn't drawn to the flashier characters, but rather to the cool capable
intelligence of the half-Vulcan science officer who always had the right
answers.

Being a rather smart kid, I really liked that
concept.

If there is more to it than that. The depth and
layers that Leonard Nimoy gave to Spock meant that the character continue to
resonate with me as I grew up; the fact that I can still raise my right eyebrow
in a mirror imitation of Spock's own expression had nothing to do with
that. More so than any other fictional influence my life, Spock was an ideal I
aspired to without truly knowing why.

At least, not until this very week, when a letter Leonard
Nimoy wrote in 1968 came to my attention which perfectly explains why I was so
profoundly affected by Spock:

Click to read the letter Leonard wrote, it's very much worthwhile.

The fantastic letter to the young fan sums up, in my eyes,
what I now see as Spock's enduring appeal in my life. I was profoundly affected
today, and still am, by Leonard Nimoy's passing; I hadn't known until he was
gone how big an influence he was on my life from such an early age. I never
developed into a Trekkie, as I felt that wasn't really the kind of fannish ‘worship’
that Leonard Nimoy inspired in me, after seeing each episode of the original
show a gazillion times.

Instead, the character of Spock inspired me to be
a better me.

From the ISS in space, over Boston, Leonard's home town

Reading the outpouring of tributes from so many who
mourn his loss has only strengthened the admiration I have for both the man and
his work. I will continue to revere the gifts he has between the world and none
more so than Spock.

Live Long and Prosper, my friends.

Feb 28 – Social, me?

I took 3 hours to be social today, more or less.

It was a friends birthday, with invitees gathering
at a cozy sushi spot out in Langford. Not having a vehicle, I hopped the bus to
travel half-hour in either direction, entertaining myself en route with a
freshly-minted ebook copy of the first third of my second novel’s first draft; try
saying that quickly! It was a
beautiful sunny day and I enjoyed the trip on the noisy bus all the more
because my lovely Parrot headphones completely tuned out the rumble and roar of
the trip.

The party itself was great; there's quite a few
g33ks in the crowd and the sushi itself was excellent. What I did find most
amusing was that many of the people present were young parents and it seems
that I'm now in that socio-age group all over again. Being single and childless
puts me in a minority among my friends, but it's nothing that I feel the lack
of; most everyone I see around me is quite happy to be apparent with their
partners.

I guess societal pressure is and what it used to
be, because I feel fairly content as I am.

It does bother me, from time to time, as I've been
told over the years repeatedly that I'd make a great dad. I'm sure of mentioned
this before, but that sort of thing just makes me all the more determined not
to just be a dad, if it comes to that: I want the whole package, thanks very
much. I know several people who were desperate to have children and that primary
time-sensitive urge meant they didn’t make the best choices when it came to
their partners, at least in my eyes( wow, that sounded so judgemental... ). All the same, it’s been interesting to see
how things have worked out for them and I'm happy to say that from what I've observed,
most of them have had it on towards the fairytale life for the most part.

Me, I just write about that sort of thing; it’s
far easier to edit.

March 1 - Mecha Anniversary!

Thirty years ago today, anime magic erputed on TV’s
across North America.

The show, of course, was Robotech and from its
first few episodes, millions of kids were glued to the screens each week to see
what was going to happen next. Giant robots, aliens, space battles with a
female Japanese pop star singing her heart out in the middle of everything
going on: it was excitement overload and I couldn't get enough.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to fly a fighter jet
that transforms into a robot too? Here's a modern 720p remake of the opening sequence - love that music!

One of the major things about Robotech that grabbed
my imagination( apart from the music! )and never let go was the art design: all
of the mecha looked real. They moved
and leaped and fought and flew as though bound by the rules of physics, grounding
the show and making everything that happened believable, at least to me.
Combined with the gripping story and fanciful settings, it was enough to spark
my imagination even to this day. Sure, the stories and sometimes sloppy editing
to chop together the North American version of the Japanese episodes don't hold
up nowadays, but I can still sit back and enjoy the show for what it is: my
introduction to anime.

And giant freakin’ robots fighting space aliens.
Can’t forget that!!!

The passing of a friend's father this week, along with Leonard Nimoy, has again brought the issue of mortality to the front of my brain. I need to get more writing done and less not-writing, even when I'm tired or off-kilter or whatever. That all-important first draft has to be brought into existence, sooner or later, before I go non-existent. Which, I hope, is many decades and many completed book series from now!